One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Saturday, May 05, 2012

Movie Geeks United examines the legacy of the 1984 rock classic, Purple Rain (and subject of my latest book) in its new episode, now airing. Jamey DuVall and I recorded the interview a few weeks ago, and had a great talk about the film, and about musicals, circa the mid-1980s.

“Battle
for Freedom,” the final episode of Jason of Star Command (1978 – 1979)
really pulls out all the stops. The
episode features several new miniatures, a grand space battle (with more space
craft per shot than we’ve seen before…), some terrific character interaction,
and, finally, even a sense of resolution.

In
this installment, Commander Stone (John Russell) is intercepted by Dragos while
en route to Fleet Command to accept a medal for his outstanding service. Dragos holds Stone hostage and informs Jason,
now acting Commander of Star Command, that Stone will not be released unless
Jason cedes the peaceful planet Chryton to the tyrant.

Chryton’s
prime consul, Jo-neen, visiting Star Command, officially requests protection
for her planet. Jason attempts to stall
Dragos, leaving Parsafoot in command while he searches the D-2 Star System for
Stone. Unfortunately, the planets in
that system have strange effects on humanoids.
Jason and Samantha take an antidote created by Parsafoot and head out to
rescue their superior officer.

On
the planet, Jason and Samantha find Commander Stone, but he has lost his memory. Jason is able to help Stone recover his
identity. In part he does so by reminding Stone of Dragos – the man who forced Stone’s people from their
planet -- and in part by reminding him that he is “the best commanding officer Star Command has ever had.”

As
Jason, Samantha and Commander Stone leave the planet in the D2 system,
Parsafoot launches a fleet of Star Command drones to meet Dragos’ attack fleet
in space and defend Chryton. It’s a
rout, but the defeated Dragos has one last trick up his sleeve. He attempts to use a deadly anti-matter ray or
“projector” to blast Jason’s Star-Fire into another dimension. Jason uses a nearby red dwarf to reflect the
beam, and Dragos instead is cast away into another reality “for a long, long time.”

You
might expect a Saturday morning’s kid show, at the end of a long season, to do
a bottle show or something rather modest, having run out of budgetary
resources. Instead, Jason of Star Command goes
out in grand style, with a whole host of new special effects and miniatures. For the first time, we see the unmanned Star
Command drones, and by the half-dozen, no less.
We also see Dragos’ fearsome battle stations in orbit of Chryton.

And,
of course, we get the final tango between the deadly Dragonstar and Jason’s zippy
Star-Fire. There are more miniature
shots – and of greater complexity –
in this twenty-minute segment than in the last several episodes of the season
put together.

Although
certainly the intention would have been to have another season of episodes, “Battle
for Freedom” provides a nice sense of closure to the Saturday morning
series. The socially-inept Parsafoot
begins a romantic relationship with Jo-neen, and more importantly, Jason and
Commander Stone finally seem comfortable with another. They have some nice banter in “Battle for
Freedom,” and come to an acceptance, you might say, of their different way of
doing things. They started out as uncomfortable allies at
the beginning of season two, and end the same season with a strong sense of
mutual respect. In this regard, the cast
change from James Doohan as Commander Canarvin to John Russell as Commander Stone
really works in the series’ favor. So
much so, in fact, I’m inclined to agree with Jason’s explicit assessment: Stone
is the better commander.

And,
of course, Dragos is finally defeated in this valedictory episode. As the villain disappears, shouting
maniacally “some day…Jason…” it’s
clear he could return, had the series come back. But as the final episode of the show, the
defeat of Dragos also plays as a final victory.
The scourge of the universe is gone.

Watching
Jason
of Star Command today, it never lets you forget it was made for
children. The stories are simple and
straight-forward, so much so that they become rather boring at times for an
adult. Yet – from time to time – the character
interaction is really great, particularly as it pertains to Stone and
Jason. More to the point, the special
effects remain astonishing examples of 1970s post-Star Wars state of the
art. They compare favorably, in fact,
with prime time efforts such as Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) and
Buck
Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981).

I
can’t say I wouldn’t have appreciated more thematic depth in a lot of these second
season episodes, but again…these shows were designed for kids. Right now, my five year old son Joel is into
Transformers, Ben 10 and other modern franchises,
but if he ever gets into the realm of space adventures, Jason of Star Command is
a perfect gateway.

Friday, May 04, 2012

I
commenced this week on the blog with a survey of the Cult-TV faces of “sports
and fitness,” and shall now close it with a look back at The
Blood of Heroes (1989), a film concerning a particularly vicious sport
called “Jugger.”

Since
I watched and
reviewedRollerball (1975) a few months ago, I’ve been fascinated with
the future of professional sports. We know that professional sports will likely
remain extremely commercial and profitable going forward, but the contemporary
and ongoing scandal involving Gregg Williams, defensive coordinator for the New
Orleans Saints also suggests that, perhaps, sports are growing more brutal.

In
case you haven’t heard, Williams is the fellow who coached his football players
to “kill
the head” so that “the body” would die.
He also encouraged his players to rough up an opposing player with a
concussion.

Not
exactly “good sport” is it?

And
people say that horror films incite violence…

Regardless,
The
Blood of Heroes is a violent and enthralling post-apocalyptic
film. In some senses, it’s actually the Rocky
(1976) of the dystopia genre, because it gets the audience squarely behind its
underdog heroes, and resolves in an incredibly hard-fought victory, with the
heroic athletes bloodied but unbroken.

Unusually,
the film is also a rite-of-passage story with a strong female character, Joan
Chen’s Kidda, holding center stage. Most
often, even in today’s cinema, the hero’s journey is a male one, but Kidda and
her dreams of a better life pulse at the heart of the film’s action. Rutger Hauer portrays an experienced Jugger
player named Sallow, but in many ways, this veteran actor takes on the supporting
role of the “wise elder,” revealing to Kidda the ropes of the game, and,
importantly, the politics behind the game.

Reviews
for The
Blood of Heroes were mixed upon theatrical release. Vincent Canby at The New York Timeschampioned
the film and wrote that it is “entertainingly grim and, in an upside-down
way, romantic.”

Time-Out,
meanwhile, noted that The Blood of Heroes (a.k.a. The
Salute of the Jugger) offered“little to
look at and nothing worth hearing.”

In this instance, I agree with Canby’s conclusion.

Although characterization in the film is
ultimately subordinate to the frequent and violent jugger matches, one
nevertheless develops genuine affection for the players here: Hauer, Chen, Vincent
D’Onofrio and Delroy Lindo.

And although it is easy to gaze at the film and
conclude that the narrative is somewhat meandering or plot-less, this episodic quality, this loose structure, actually works in
the film’s favor. Watching The
Blood of Heroes, you are afforded a real taste of the Jugger’s life,
from the wearying nomadic existence, to the violence and intensity of the sport,
to the seemingly-endless ritual of tending to wounds and bruises after a match. The
film repeats this sequence of events over and over, until you
feel like you’re right there with the athletes, sweating and bleeding alongside
them.

Perhaps The Blood of Heroes’ underlying message
isn’t entirely deep, but it is, nevertheless worthwhile. The film suggests we
are all tougher than we think, and that even when the forces of the world seem
aligned against us, we’ll keep fighting and striving for something better than
the status quo.

“Play hard, you'll forget the fear.”

The
Blood of Heroes
is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which (most) folks no longer have the
time or luxury to think about professional sports, at least as we understand
them now. The world’s infrastructure has
collapsed following a series of wars, and folks no longer remember the “Golden Age of the 20th century”
or “the miraculous technology or cruel
wars that followed.”

Accordingly,
the popular game of Jugger removes the commercialism and professionalism of modern-day
sports, but amps up the brutality angle.
In this violent game, a team consisting of several players -- a “qwik,”
a “chain,” an “enforcer” and a “slicer” -- battles an opposing team. The match is bloody and violent, and doesn’t
end until the winning team manages to place a dog skull on a pike, or stake. Roving Jugger teams subsist by beating local
teams, and collecting tributes for their victories.

The
film follows a group of nomadic players, led by taciturn Sallow (Hauer). His team comes upon a farming community where
a passionate young woman, Kidda (Chen) wants to join the team as “qwik.” Kidda boasts dreams of playing in “the
League,” inside one of the nine cities.
Sallow himself was once in “the League” but was expelled from high
society for his inappropriate behavior with a lord’s concubine. Since that time, Sallow has eschewed contact
with the cities, but he nonetheless tells Kidda a challenge can be issued to
the city’s team. If the team accepts…they’re
in!

After
several victories, Sallow’s team travels to a city to mount such a challenge,
but the wronged Lord – named Vile –
still wants Sallow punished and humiliated.
He instructs the city’s team leader, Gonzo, to blind Sallow during the
match, and then, essentially to beat him to a pulp.

The
match in the city commences in bloody fashion, and for Kidda and Sallow, their
future is on the line…

“Juggers can't fuck after
the game. It doesn't work. Unless you like to rub wounds against wounds.”

In the introduction to this
review, I mentioned Rocky as a clear antecedent to The Blood of Heroes, but
perhaps, in terms of sports movies, I also should have made notation of Bull
Durham (1987) too. In that classic
baseball movie – one of the best ever made -- a player named Crash (Kevin
Costner) is cast out of the minor leagues and sent down to the Single A division
to mentor a promising player, one who could make it all the way to the
majors. As that player rises, Crash
hopes to rise again too…

In very, very broad strokes,
The
Blood of Heroes follows a similar sort of outline, with an aging
player, tossed from the big leagues, coming to mentor a young, promising player
in a smaller, less professional venue.
Sallow and Kidda represent those characters here, but in both situations
there’s this the idea of a cycle: of the
old, wiser player not only tutoring the young, but returning to the world that,
at some point, wronged him. In terms
of visuals, The Blood of Heroes, written and directed by David Peoples,
clearly owes a lot to The Road Warrior (1982) aesthetic,
and yet thematically it is much more a sports movie than a science fiction
epic.

Here – as in real life – athletic prowess is one of the few ways one can successfully
bridge the gap in an unequal economic system.
In the film, we see the immaculately-dressed, immaculately-cleaned upper
class citizens of the underground city, and can contrast their aristocratic look
with that of the Juggers, who are leathery, filthy, wind-blown, and marred by scars
and bruises. Just as is the case in our
society, the upper classes are willing to pay handsomely to be entertained by
good athletes, and thus a sense of class warfare seems present in all
interactions. One upper-class woman
likes to decorate her porcelain skin with the blood of Jugger players, and so
there’s also an impression of a vampire-like
over-class lording it over the under-class. .

Uniquely, at its valedictory
moment, The Blood of Heroes visually mirrors to its spiritual cinematic
antecedent, the aforementioned Rollerball. There, in the final battle, James Caan’s
player Jonathan E, defeated the last enemy player right in front of his
nemesis, an executive played by John Houseman.
Specifically, he checked the opposing player into the glass barrier
separating him from Houseman.

Here, director Peoples’
stages a nearly identical shot, with Sallow taking out Gonzo, just inches from
Vile, in front of Vile’s box seats (behind a kind of protective cage).

In both cases is the same
idea is transmitted: the notion of individualism trumping established order, or
authority.

In both cases, defiance
beats obedience.

If anything at all undercuts
the success of The Blood of Heroes, it is the final triumphal note, however,
the film sounds after Sallow and Kidda win the day. Immediately, the vulture-like upper class descends
upon them, congratulating the players, flirting with them, chatting them
up. The implication is that Sallow,
Kidda and the others are now in like flint, and welcomed into a life of comfort
and luxury.

But really, aren’t these
Jugger players letting the establishment absorb them, at this point, and becoming
part of the corrupt 1% percent in the process?
Aren’t they, by joining the league, playing the aristocracy’s game? I like some of the early shots set in the
city, where Sallow and Kidda are literally on the outside looking in (through
bars on the windows) at the upper class, but the ending seems to undercut this crucial
sense of outsider-ism.

It seems that the real point
of the movie is (or should be…) that reaching the top doesn’t necessarily put
you where you want to be.

Once you get there, you
realize you’re still trapped playing another man’s sport.

Aside from that complaint, The
Blood of Heroes is a rousing sports movie in a dystopian setting. Shot in Australia, the film makes the most of
its picturesque exteriors, and we see every variation of jugger match known to
man. The game is played in the scorching
sun, and in the rain and mud. There’s
also some interesting symbolism in the film in the form of the game itself: a literalization of the notion of picking
over the bones of a dead world. That’s
what Jugger is, literally, a battle to win a skull, a bone…something dead and
useless.

The Blood of Heroes is a visceral and involving film, in my judgment, and one
made doubly so by the twin decisions to keep dialogue to a minimum and to not
over-burden the narrative with more incident or detail than necessary. As I wrote above, the film is extremely
episodic and repetitive: travel, play, sew up wounds. Rinse
and repeat. If you allow yourself to
go with the flow, you can fall into synch with the movie’s distinctive,
almost-trance-like rhythm and literally almost feel what it’s like to dwell in
this world of sweat, dirt and blood.

And given the alternative of
those porcelain-skinned, aristocratic vampires, you may even come to agree with
Sallow’s opinion that scarred skin – like
this violent but memorable film -- is strangely beautiful in its own way.

Finally, when asked if
he supported equal pay for women in the form of the Lily Ledbetter Act, Presidential
nominee-to-be Mitt Romney whiffed because he needed more time to interface
with the vast, remote computer bank storing all of his previously-held positions
on the issue. Accessing…Accessing…

While this war on women
continues, no end in sight, into Election 2012, cult television history reminds
us precisely where this kind of talk could be headed. Unless we're very,
very careful, women will strike back and wage a War on Men.

And men will lose that
war...badly.

In the sincere hope of
preventing such an unfortunate eventuality and brokering a truce in this ongoing
battle between the sexes, I thus offer up a tour of the “War on Men:” seven of the
most memorable Matriarchies in cult-television history.

You’ll note that many of
these female-dominated cultures -- oddly -- play rather distinctly as kinky male fantasies
rather than as legitimate, consistent visions of female rule.

Or didn’t you realize
that the first order of the day when women rule the planet is the imposition of
a new dress code?

The culture is ruled by
the dictatorial Marg (Diana Muldaur), and all men are considered property, and
called “Dinks.” The men are also routinely
drugged by their women to make them compliant and untroubled by their status as
slaves. Once Dylan kicks off the effects
of the drug, he turns on his manly charm and teaches Marg a thing or two about…dinks.

2. "Medusa" (Star
Maidens [1975]). In this
short-lived German/British series created by Eric Paice, the planet Medusa
drifts in space, and its inhabitants dwell in an underground metropolis. There, women rule, and men serve as domestic
servants. Two slaves, Shem (Gareth
Thomas) and Adam (Pierre Brice) decide they are tired of being taken for
granted (“who takes care of the kids?!”)
and make a beeline for nearby Earth.

Their female masters pursue,
but are troubled by the fact that Earth is ruled by men (!). Indeed, the Medusan mistresses claim such a
set-up is in “violation of all common
sense.” Considering the Earth a “great disappointment,” the Medusan
Matriarchy sets out to retrieve Shem and Adam.
If they fail, a new, illegal “men’s liberation movement” could take hold
on Medusa, overturning the apple cart.

3. Entra" (Space:
1999: "Devil's Planet" [1976]). In this second season
episode of Gerry Anderson’s Space: 1999, Commander Koenig (Martin
Landau) is captured by Elizia (Hildegard Neil), the warden, governor and
absolute ruler of the prison colony of Entra. The prisoners incarcerated
there are all men -- political dissidents
who spoke against female rule, apparently -- and are now guarded by cat-suited
Amazon women who viciously wield whips.

The prisoners' only
opportunity to escape this hellish life is to survive sadistic Elizia's vicious
game, "The Hunt." If a prisoner does survive being hunted by
Elizia and her women on the inhospitable moon’s forest surface -- being both outnumbered
and out-equipped -- he can be transported back to the home world, his sentence
is commuted.

The only problem: a
plague has decimated the home world, Ellna, killing all living beings. So when Elizia beams the victorious political
dissidents back home, she's actually issuing the troublesome men a death sentence.

4."Turnabout" (The
Fantastic Journey [1977]). In this episode of the short-lived TV series
set in the Bermuda Triangle, Queen Hayalana (Joan Collins) finally tires of her
brutish husband and his stupid men, and with the help of a powerful computer called
"The Complex," zaps all the males of the province away to a null
zone, or pocket universe.

Promising "an end to male domination,"
Hayalana then captures the series' heroes, Varian (Jared Martin), Dr. Willaway
(Roddy McDowall), Scott Jordan (Ike Eisenmann) and Dr. Fred Walters (Carl
Franklin), and plans to keep them as “breeding
stock.” To convince these visiting men to remain docile and
cooperative, this cold-hearted queen then poisons their food, and tells the men
they will only receive the antidote only if they comply with her wishes.

Hayalana’s plans come
crashing down however, when none of the women in the province are capable of
controlling “The Complex,” a computer built by…you guessed it, a man.

5. "Xantia" (Buck
Rogers in the 25th Century [1979]: "Planet of the Amazon Women.")
Buck (Gil Gerard) is captured by gorgeous slave traders and auctioned off to
the highest bidder in this first season episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century. You see, all the men of
Xantia have either been killed in one of their incessant wars, or are being
held prisoner by the planet’s enemy: the Ruathans. Thus the women of Xantia need some *ahem* company,
not to mention some men to do all the physical labor.

Watch as Buck is
stripped down to his chest, and the women “bidders” at his auction coo and gasp
over his manly physique!

6. "Adore" (Otherworld
[1985]: "I am Woman, Hear Me Roar.") In this episode of the
1985 cult series, Otherworld, a militantly female society rules the roost in the
province of “Adore,” founded by a female Zone Trooper commandment, Livia.

The men in “Adore” do
not even know how to read, and the "gender stratification" laws
discourage marriage. A “gender patrol”
walks the streets, maintaining order, and girls ogle slave men in the popular
magazine, “Available Hunk.”

And, of course, there’s
the Gender Arcade, the marketplace where men are greased up, stripped down, and
sold to the highest bidder.

When the patriarch of
the Sterling family, Hal (Sam Groom), objects to the status of males as
second-class citizens, a woman in power reminds him to: “keep in mind that this is a conservative part of town and will resist
compromise.” When Hal’s wife, June
(Gretchen Corbett) sticks up for him, the same women sneers: “Oh…I understand…you’re progressives.”

7. "Angel One." (Star
Trek: The Next Generation [1987]:"Angel One.") In this first
season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise D visits the
Matriarchy of “Angel One” in hopes of finding out if survivors of a freighter,
the Odin, landed there. They find out
that a group of men did survive, and are making trouble for the female
leadership.

Mistress Baeta (Karen
Montgomery) – or “the elected one” –
pronounces the death sentence for the survivors of the Odin and any women unwise
enough to attempt to alter the peace of Angel One’s female-dominated
society. Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) steps in to
argue against the death penalty. Ultimately,
he is persuasive...perhaps because Mistress Baeta still remembers the space
stud in his colorful, open-chest blouse and earrings…

Finally, besides Star Maidens, another series also featured female-dominated world as its setting: Norman Lear's All that Glitters (1977), starring Linda Gray and Greg Evigan. I've never seen it, but would love to get my hands on a few episodes.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Last
week for the collectible of the week I remembered the Darth Vader-esque Knight of Darkness, from Ideal’s “Star Team” line in 1977. This week, I want to offer a closer look at another
cool space toy in that same line (carefully labeled to include the copyright
dates of both 1970 and 1977).

Here
it is: the Star Hawk, the “Star Team
spaceship with motorized hatch and space-like sounds.”

And
“Zeroid’s spaceship, the Star Hawk
transports your Zeroid from one daring adventure to the next. When you activate the special motor, the
hatch slides open, landing pods go into position, exit ramp lowers, and
space-like sounds announce the arrival of Zeroid, to help you save the day.”

As
for the Zeroid himself -- one of the Knight’s nemeses along with ZEM-21 -- he
is a modified version of the popular (and now incredibly expensive...) 1960s Zeroid line.
He’s a “highly detailed action
robot with moveable arms. ZEROID rolls on a twin-tread base. Flip on his special flishing signal lamp and
send messages to his friends.”

I
wrote last week how my grandparents bought me the Star Hawk (w/Zeroid), the
Knight of Darkness and ZEM-21, and at first I was disappointed with the
generous gift because I would have preferred the Millennium Falcon, Darth
Vader, R2-D2 and C3PO. But it wasn’t
long before I became intrigued by these Star Wars knock-off toys, and came to see that
they allowed me to create my own play universe.
In particular, I remember that the Knight of Darkness camped out in G.I.
Joe’s Adventure Team Headquarters.

Today,
I’m really glad I still have these particular toys in my home office. Even today, Zeroid’s dome lights up, and the
Star Hawk hatch still slides open (with a springy rat-a-tat sound). The decals are coming off now, after all
these years, but these toys remain…ideal for the imagination. My son Joel loves them, particularly the
Zeroid and his ship, the Star Hawk.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

One
of my favorite lines in all of horror cinema comes from The Blair Witch Project
(1999). Josh (Joshua Leonard) gazes
through a video camera view-finder at Heather (Heather Donohue) and trenchantly
notes that the picture isn’t “quite
reality.”

He’s
right, of course. And that’s part of the
reasons we love movies so much. For ninety minutes or two hours, the
camera becomes our eyes, and what we see through that camera isn’t quite
reality. It’s heightened reality. It’s
manipulated reality. It’s shaped and
edited reality.

Given
how crucially important film grammar is in constructing an effective horror
film, in crafting a sense of escalating unease and terror, it’s only natural,
perhaps, that the camera itself has become an important player and topic of debate
within the texts of many popular horror films.

Thanks
in part to technological improvements, the portable home video camera became
affordable and lightweight in the mid-1980s.
Accordingly, a revolution in home movies began, and very shortly, this
trend “trickled down” into horror movie narratives. Videographers or amateur movie makers started
out by appearing in the “victim pool” of mid-1980s horror films (April
Fool’s Day [1986], Friday the 13th VIII: Jason
Takes Manhattan [1989]), but more than that the camera soon became a player itself in the longstanding social
argument about the value of horror as a genre.

Consider
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989), and the notorious scene in
which Otis (Tom Towles) and Henry (Michael Rooker) go out “hunting” and kill a
randomly-selected suburban family. They
record the horrific murder and rape spree on their camcorder and later -- while
drinking a few beers -- kick back and watch their blood-thirsty escapades. Otis even rewinds the tape, thoroughly
entertained: “I want to see it again.”

The
issue here is quite simply this: do we, as human beings, actually revel in the
suffering of other people? Does the video
camera actually transform another person’s suffering into our entertainment? This isn’t
just a horror movie question, either. This is a
real life question. Consider how often the grotesque footage of Saddam Hussein’s dead, bloody sons was replayed on cable television. Or think how often the terror of the 9/11
attacks on the WTC were rerun in the days following the horrific event. Do we, by watching recorded events, become complicit in a
news event? That’s certainly the
territory of such films as Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002).

A
similar was developed in Flatliners (1990). There, a yuppie
doctor-in-training, Joe Hurley (William Baldwin) secretly filmed all of his
sexual conquests, and then watched and relived them later. He had taken a liberty with his “lovers” and
would have to pay for that moral trespass. His actions had consequences. The video camera could be used to commit a crime, an invasion of personal space and privacy.

In
the aforementioned Blair Witch Project (1999), the video-camera, as Josh notes,
functions as a shield, distancing the
viewer from unpleasant reality. Josh
notes that the camera offers a “filtered
reality” in which one can “pretend
everything isn’t quite the way it is.”

In
other words, the act of perceiving reality through a camera lens distances
oneself from the objects and situations perceived. In a non-horror setting, this was actually
the subtext for the final episode of the popular sitcom Seinfeld in 1998. Jerry and his friends watched a crime being
conducted (a car-jacking) through a video camera, but did not intervene to actually stop the
crime as it was occurring. The apparently-passive act of
gazing through the camera enabled George, Elaine, Kramer and Jerry to see
themselves as being somehow apart from reality, and apart from community, even
from the law itself. There was no need to help
the victim of a crime. They were merely…watching,
as they would a TV show.

With
the heyday of found footage films upon us (including [REC], Cloverfield,
Paranormal Activity,Apollo 18 and the like) we as viewers are asked
again and again to reckon with the role of the camera in our lives, and in
horrific scenarios.

But
where The Blair Witch Project asks us to assemble a sense of order
out of grainy pixelized images that didn’t make sense in a conventional fashion
and didn’t reveal anything about the looming threat (the Blair Witch), these
later examples of the form strive more for certainty than uncertainty. The Demon in Paranormal Activity (2009),
for example, presents for a full-frame close-up at the end of the film, just so
the audience gets its money’s worth out of a “creature feature.” This (dumb...) ending belies the fact that more
people own cameras now than at any time in human history, and nobody has ever,
anywhere, recorded footage of a demon. Films like Paranormal Activity don’t
use the camera to reveal how our eyes can lie, only to assure that audience
expectations are met.

The
camera can also be a social good in the horror film.
It can be a tool of investigation and observation (The Lost World: Jurassic Park,
Poltergeist), but more often the point of many horror films is that you can’t
really hide from terror behind the eye-piece.
The camera may be a filter, but, in the final analysis, it’s a filter
that doesn’t protect you. Beyond the camera
lens, life is happening in all its unpredictable, horrific, and sometimes
wondrous forms.

The greatest terror associated with the video camera is that it could be all that survives a terrible event, a witness to death, and to your very end. Years later, your footage might be found...

"This book is not just for fans of Prince or Purple Rain. It is a great companion to a film that changed music and the film industry. Reading it makes you want to watch Purple Rain with a new set of eyes. One in a series, this book is one to keep and read over again. It had so many great little facts as well as bigger ones, that you won't get them all in the first read through."

"Muir expounds not only on the behind-the-scenes machinations of the film, but also on how The Kid shares many positive and negative personality traits as Prince himself. Overall, the book is an indispensable book for anyone who is a fan of Prince, his music and his films."

Throughout
cult-tv history, we have witnessed our colorful heroes indulging in team sports
and individual acts of fitness. The primary idea here is one of staying fit, of
keeping in good shape. In Star
Trek’s future, the healthy officer of Starfleet don’t give short shrift
to physical exercise, and we’ve witnessed on more than one ship how the
officers utilize the ship’s gymnasium (“Charlie X”) or conduct their daily work-out
routine (“The Price.”)

In terms of training and fitness,
the universe of Gerry Anderson was much the same. The pilots of S.H.A.D.O. were
seen to work-out rigorously in exmples of physical readiness (“Ordeal”) in UFO. And on Space: 1999’s Moonbase Alpha, a weight room was depicted in one
episode (“Testament of Arkadia”) though it was really a light redressing of
Commander Koenig’s office.

In other programs, alien versions of sports have
appeared. The Colonial Warriors of the
original Battlestar Galactica (1978) doubled as athletes, for instance,
in a basketball-styled game called Triad that appeared in episodes such as “War
of the Gods” and “Murder on the Rising Star.” In the re-made Battlestar Galactica of the last decade, "Triad" became "Pyramid" instead.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979
– 1981) likewise revealed a veritable panoply of alien and futuristic sports in
the first season episode, “Olympiad.” In
truth, this story was a Cold War allegory about an athlete attempting to defect from a
repressive alien civilization, a stand-in for our then-rival, the Soviet
Union.

“Olympiad” aired in 1980, the
same year that President Carter oversaw the boycott of the Summer Olympics in
Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Buck Rogers allegory not only spoke
of the political climate of the day, it introduced the world to futuristic
variations of boxing, the high jump, and even the luge competition. In this
case, the luge -- or astro-slalom - was a spaceship navigating a corridor of space force fields! Although the episode dealt with freedom, and
a culture that did not value freedom, it also offered hope since all the
planets of the galaxy still came together every four years to celebrate the
Olympiad.

In the more horror-oriented cult-tv
programs, sports and fitness have often been entry points into terrifying story
possibilities. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s
second season installment, “Go Fish,” members of the Sunnydale High swim team
were (under their coach’s guidance…) inhaling a chemical to improve speed and
endurance in the water. However, the
substance was actually transforming the boys (including Prison Break's Wentworth Miller...) into reptilian creatures from the
black lagoon. Once more, a metaphor was
at work under the surface, only here it concerned performance-enhancing
steroids and school athletic programs.

Smallville’s early episode “Hothead” charted
a similar path. When Clark (Tom Welling)
joined the football team over his father’s objections, he discovered that the
athletes were relaxing in a sauna that utilized the green meteor rocks, or Kryptonite.

Sometimes instances of sports and
fitness on cult television are meant only as informative expressions of a
character’s off-duty hobbies or pursuits. Involvements in sports and exercise provide a little sideways peek at
familiar characters, in new venues. We saw Fox Mulder play basketball frequently on The
X-Files. Captain Picard practiced fencing (“We’ll Always Have Paris”) and
rode horses (“Starship Mine,” “Pen Pals”) on Star Trek: The Next Generation,
while Commander Koenig seemed to favor Kendo in Space: 1999.

Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) on Deep Space Nine was a Starfleet officer who had made sports an important part of his life. A lifelong fan of baseball, Sisko viewed the sport not just as a hobby...but as a passion and a guiding philosophy. He kept a prized baseball (signed by Buck Bokai of the London King) on his desk outside Ops, and in one episode, "Take Me out the Holosuite," put together a team -- the Niners -- to compete against Captain Solok and a team of Vulcans.

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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What the Critics Say...

"...some of the best writing about the genre has been done by John Kenneth Muir. I am particularly grateful to him for the time and attention he's paid to things others have overlooked, under-appreciated and often written off. His is a fan's perspective first, but with a critic's eye to theme and underscore, to influence and pastiche..." - Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, in the foreword to Horror Films FAQ (October 2013).

"Hands down, John Kenneth Muir is one of the finest critics and writers working today. His deep analysis of contemporary American culture is always illuminating and insightful. John's film writing and criticism is outstanding and a great place to start for any budding writer, but one should also examine his work on comic books, TV, and music. His weighty catalog of books and essays combined with his significant blog production places him at the top of pop culture writers. Johns work is essential in understanding the centrality of culture in modern society." - Professor Bob Batchelor, cultural historian and Executive Director of the James Pedas Communication Center at Thiel College (2014).

"...an independent film scholar, [Muir] explains film studies concepts in a language that is reader-friendly and engaging..." (The Hindu, 2007)"...Muir's genius lies in his giving context to the films..." (Choice, 2007)